Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PORT, by JAMES MACFARLAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PORT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Alone, upon a path of fairy flow'rs
Last Line: And canopied with cloud!
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets; Travel; Journeys; Trips


ALONE, upon a path of fairy flow'rs
That drank a wild sweet light from dying day,
Like a calm thought, across those sumptuous hours,
A poet held his way.

He had been one whose earnest spirit dream'd
By misty mountain summits, robed in rain:
Whose soul ran riot when the tempest stream'd
Athwart the moaning main.

He had borne much of wrong, had tasted crime,
'Mong holy martyrs trod with bleeding brows;
And with the minstrels of the olden time
Held many a deep carouse.

He had stood oft 'mid ruins old, sublime,
In classic climes whose airs enrich the globe;
Where old Decay, the sullen slave of Time,
Sits in his ivy robe.

His soul had wander'd through the paths of change,
On to the silent doorways of the dead;
In many a flight of vision, mystic, strange,
Through the spher'd night had fled.

He had found beauty on the snow-robed plain,
And mountain stream struck dumb by chilling frost,
And in the white skirts of the hurricane
That swept the rugged coast.

Love had he felt in one wild rush of dawn,
That, bright'ning, deepen'd into lustrous day,
Then slowly pass'd, o'er life's stern hills withdrawn
In sunset rich away.

With calm, stern Nature in the wilds he trod --
Felt the commanding joy that awes and thrills
When some wild sun-burst, like the glance of God,
Smote all the wond'ring hills.

Before him lay the sea; on either hand
The gloomy mountain ranges cloud-wrapt hung;
While over many a dreary league of land
The solemn see-breeze sung.

Gilding with silver light the zone of stars,
All wilder'd rose the white moon, lustrous, large,
O'er the wild tumult of the rock-ribb'd bars,
And oozy, salt sea-marge.

There knelt the poet, girt with holy fears,
His voice in soul-wrapt worship warbling loud,
Within the temple roof'd with burning spheres,
And canopied with cloud!





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